The "Entitled" Generation

A recent New York Magazine article epitomizes the seemingly doubled edged nature of analysis of Occupy Wall Street and the general status of recent college graduates. You could probably tell from the title "The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright" how disappointing and noncommittal the article actually is. But even so, the article proves useful as it neatly encapsulates the general attitude toward "my generation" (I use that term very broadly) and our continuing bout of unemployment and underemployment.

Among the many disappointing and sometimes outrageous claims proffered by the author we find the mainstays of hackneyed and superficial social commentary: Kids these days suffer from entitlement because they were given trophies just for showing up, kids these days all think they're super stars and can do whatever they want, everyone thinks they'll be a millionaire, and so on. None of this is new and it is decidedly not unique to our culture or even our century. I think what makes the most recent variation on this theme (appearing implicitly in this article) particularly troubling is the fact that it emphasizes a somewhat older idea that there is in fact of group of people who deserve to go to college and there is another group of people who don't. Those who don't shouldn't be allowed to have an education and those who do not only should be, but should also be handsomely rewarded for it. The categories generally follow the rule that if you can afford to attend, then you are permitted to study whatever you want. You are in the class of Americans who deserve to go to college because you can pay out of pocket. The exception to the pay out of pocket rule are citizens who plan to attend for the sole purpose of securing a job, even if they hate the field they'll be required to study. From the article:

It’s not exactly a happy story, but it can be a hopeful one. And the early-onset pragmatism is trickling down. One of the youngest young people I spoke with was Kristine Nwosu. The child of Nigerian immigrants, she’s 19 years old and a sophomore at Temple University, putting her among the first members of our generation to enter college knowing full well the scary merry-go-round they’ll be climbing aboard when they’re done. […] Kristine used to want to cook for a living, too. But she’s leaning toward studying to be a pharmacist, a field for which hiring prospects remain bright. “I have a slight interest in it,” she says. That now feels like enough.

The reason that Kristine Nwosu doesn't deserve derision for knowingly entering college at a time when tuition is increasing and the job market is awful is because she's willing to give up her passion to do something she barely gives a shit about on the grounds that "hiring prospects are bright." For now, at least.

I don't bring this article up because it is the only one of its kind. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The responses to recent college graduates and current college students have been noncommittal at best and outright hostile at worst. While many people can agree that it's unfortunate for so many of us to be graduating at a time when the job market is so poor, there are just as many people who blame us for our situation. They believe we should not have attended college at all, as though we could have foreseen when we enrolled that the economy was going to collapse, or that even after it started to improve, job creation would remain stagnant. They think that even if we weren't able to see this coming, we should have at least put our education on hold and gotten a 'real job' in the meantime. We were never told how we could do that in a job market offering as few as one job for every six applicants. We were also saddled with unprecedented student debt coupled with soaring tuition prices that made dropping out of college seem both dangerous and crazy, since we had sunk so much money into our educations. And it could only get worse from there.

Now we're being told that if we had just worked 40-70 hours a week while attending school we wouldn't have accrued so much debt. But we know that this isn't true, because of the unemployment rate among college age students and the practical impossibility of attending school full time while working full time. I know there are people with the 53% who claim to work upwards of 50 or 60 hours a week while attending school full time, but I'm sorry, I think you're exaggerating. That's a hard pill to swallow when recent reports indicate that most students who attempt to work full time either stop attending school or drop down to part time and wind up amassing even more student debt because it takes them much longer to reach graduation.

Ironic, yes? Those students who have taken the advice of a society that tells them they can do everything if they work hard enough have gotten an even worse deal than those of us who chose to work part time while going to school full time. And yet the lie continues.

Reporting on the effects of for-profit colleges has been dismal, and I think few people realize just what the hell is going on with our education system. We want to strip k-12 public school teachers of most of their rights and benefits, thereby making the practice of teaching in this area that much more unattractive to people who are already struggling to make ends meet, and sort of assume that by the time these kids get to college everything will have worked itself out. A new trend is emerging across the country of hiring part time professors at universities to avoid paying out benefits or awarding tenure. Meanwhile, the quality of education declines rapidly at these institutions because our professors have to take on more teaching jobs to make ends meet. They don't have time to devote to their students. They don't have time to devote to their lessons or their classes. They have time to go from one job to the next and the next until they are dead and someone comes to take their place.

Well, maybe we shouldn't attend college. Maybe we should walk out of our classrooms right now and stop attending:

• because everyone is being lied to, not just students and their parents, but citizens who think this shit doesn't affect them (just like they probably thought not having a mortgage during the mortgage crisis wouldn't affect them).
• because the quality of education has declined and continues to decline preciptiously across the country, while the cost of attendance has skyrocketed. 
• because for profit colleges use predatory tactics to intentionally enroll students they have no faith in. 
• because having a BA at this moment in American history is almost worthless. Companies save money if they don't have to acknowledge you as possessing any type of skill. It's easier to hire you as a part time employee to deny you benefits, but keep you scheduled for one or two hours fewer than a full time employee. It's easier to disregard your degree with a wave of the hand and a brisk "Not in this economy."
• because the government ensured that we could never be released from our student loan debt at a time when that debt is at an all time high.
• because our country is refusing to examine any of the causes of our situation, and chooses instead to let us dangle, to let us remain unemployed or underemployed, to allow us to go on with no health insurance, to keep telling us that we live in a meritocracy and if we had just been better people we would've been fine.
• because those of you who plan to be climate or environmental scientists, engineers, activists etc, will be at the mercy of endless politicking by people who balk at your education and accuse you of deception, fraud, theft, intellectual dishonesty, and a host of other things (and that's if they aren't outright ignoring you or intentionally revising your work to reflect their own beliefs).

I realize that I haven't cited any sources in this post, but I've been busy lately with work and interviews, so bring up all questions and point out any dubious claims in the comment section please. I'll post sources as questions come in.